mozaikmage

Link to playlist here.
Fic the playlist is for is here.
Romance ga ariamaru: title drop! The plaintive way Kawatani sings “ariaMAru” just really encapsulated the vibe I was going for with this. And I mean the fic is kind of about going from years of sporadic occasional contact to suddenly spending an Excess of time with each other, so. I like it. I headcanon Kuroo as a gesukiwa liker because they were at their peak of popularity/relevance at around the same time as when he was in college.

Aoi, Koi, Daidaiiro no hi: Everyone I know with the most sophisticated music taste really likes Mass of the Fermenting Dregs. I like them fine, but I headcanon krtsk as having cooler music taste than me, and I do think it makes good train ride music.

Unbelievers: I listened to this a lot when writing my first krtsk fic so putting this on the playlist brings me back to that frame of mind

The stars will stay here: Kino is easily the greatest Russian rock band of all time, but this song’s a bit of a deeper cut for them. I like it! I think it’s fun. The chorus I think is the most relevant (rough TL by me): “I got caught in a net and I can’t get out (doodoodoodooo) / your gaze/ hits me like an electric current/ and the stars, having fallen, will all remain here/forever remain here.”

Yoake no machi de sayonara wo: I like it and having headcanoned kuroo as a gesukiwa fan thought it appropriate to add to the list

Put your camera down (English): I am content with taking in this moment caught in time.

Portugal: another fic’s author notes connected this song to Kagehina which made me scream but also Talking is Hard was my writing soundtrack for most of 2018, and is thus heavily mentally associated with my peak postcanon hq fic production period. Magic spell for making me write.

Watashi igai watashi ja nai no: coke commercial song :sob: but also a fave, and also I think describes Tsukki pretty well.

Do I Wanna Know: AM was my writing soundtrack for my first krtsk fic ever (I associate the album with work because my high school art class always played it start to finish during Work Time lol), for a while the playlist had R U Mine but then I decided this fit better.

Junkie: not thematically relevant I just liked the sound and wanted a Frederic song that wasn’t oddloop lol because they’re a J-indie Band that I think kuroo might like. I guess a little thematically relevant: the fed-up part.

Take me out: yaoi song

Eve Stepper: underrated hitorie banger. I love the melody, the chorus, wowaka’s voice (rip), it fills me with an intense unnamable forward-propelling energy and thus belongs on a writing playlist for me.

Starship Syncopation: I like to think kuroo listens to things like this when home alone.

The Adults are Talking: they’ll get it right some time.

Shunrai: this was not a j-drama ending theme (though yonezu has done several) but if it was I would’ve watched that drama. I love kenshi yonezu so much. This song is on the playlist because I like it and because of the chorus bit that translates to “to give shape to it, to give voice to it, would be so incredibly fraught…”

Hyperventilation: most interesting radwimps song. I think this is what the inside of tsukki’s head sounds like when he’s stressed out lol.

Senkou Shoujo (Put your camera down but Japanese): The English version isn’t a one-to-one translation, so it has a slightly different vibe in each language, which is why I wanted to include both versions. I like both versions!

Ai Ren Cuo Guo: Not a lyrics-based addition for once, I just like the vibes and like imagining krtsk listening to this on the train. I think it sounds nice :) Placement on the list determined by where it sounded best in the musical flow, not where it appears in the story

Sympathy: “now we’ve got that sympathy, what I’m to you, you are to me, let’s go”

Delusionalism: I like how it sounds after Sympathy.

Melancholy Kitchen: I like how it sounds at this point in the playlist, and it’s an underrated older Yonezu where he sounds a little younger and rougher than in his more recent stuff. The song is about a relationship falling apart due to a communication breakdown and one person cooking things badly, so not that thematically relevant, but I like the fun melody and the way it feels intimate and ultimately optimistic.

Hachimitsu: Spitz was most popular in the 90s so I thought it’d make sense as a band for Kuroo’s dad to be into, and then I listened through this album as a test to see if it made sense for the context in which I mentioned it and decided that yes it is in fact totally perfect.

Not Appearing In This Playlist: Lamp Genso, despite being mentioned in the fic. I do think Tsukki would like them/that album, I just didn’t want to listen to it while writing because it’s too slow and downbeat to keep me typing lol.

I have mixed feelings about Keina Suda/balloon's musical ouevre. Like I like it, but I don't, but I like it, but I don't. I've listened to Ghost Pop all the way through four times and Mellow dozens more but I wish more than anything that he'd rerecord it with someone else singing instead.

Let me back up a bit.

My first encounter with balloon was Eve's cover of Mabel popping up on my YouTube autoplay back when I was just starting to get into Eve (and I liked him way before it was cool, for the record. This was in like 2018.) I love Eve's voice. I find it soothing, not too nasal, not too high, not too low. Hearing him in an unexpected anime op or a cameo in someone else's song fills me with delight.

Now, Eve covered a few balloon songs in his utaite days, Rain and Petra being the other song relevant to my journey. I hadn't heard of the originals before, so I looked up balloon's channel, and clicked the video for Rain and Petra featuring vflower.

I turned it off immediately.

I'm not a big vflower fan at the best of times, but balloon's style of tuning (which after hearing his most recent release I've come to suspect is intentional) makes her sound even more like a strangled child than most vflower songs do. I hate that shrieky way her voice goes up on the chorus, the way it gets swallowed up by the instrumentation.

But I do like Rain and Petra generally, as a concept. I like the melody, the lyrics, Avogado6's moody scribbly MV. I just like it better when someone else is singing it.

I don't remember how I stumbled on his self-cover of Charles. Probably Youtube Autoplay again. "Well, it's not flower, so it's probably better," I thought, and then the vocals kicked in. It turns out Keina Suda's voice has a lot of what I don't like about his tuning style! But unlike the flower version of Rain and Petra, Keina Suda's Charles actually grew on me. I still won't say I like his singing, but I don't hate it as much as I hate, for example, Syudou's Miku version of Useewa for Project Sekai, which I think could be used as a torture device.

I haven't listened to his back catalog extensively yet, but what I have heard from his balloon days tends towards the sadder, more melancholy side. I mean, his commissioned song for Project Sekai was for Team Depression (Nightcord at 25:00. I'm assuming most of the people reading this are not familiar with the intricacies of the Proseka Lore).

When I started watching the Skip and Loafer anime and Mellow started playing, my first thought was, "no way, it's that guy?! Wait, he can do happy music?! For real?!" And then the credits rolled and I was right it was Keina Suda making a poppy happy slice of life anime OP. Listening closer, it did sound like him-- his instrumentation style, his penchant for repetition, and of course, his voice. Which I still didn't like. I wished they'd done that thing where the voice actors sing the openings and endings. By the way, the animation sequence for the OP was absolutely gorgeous, if you haven't seen it. But what I realized a few days later was that Mellow was, in fact, catchy as hell. I'd be making tea and thinking "koi da to shitara..."

"Huh. I wonder what else he's done that sounds like this," I thought, and then put on Ghost Pop.

Mellow was on there, but so was Nomad, his commissioned Team Depression song (which was slower and weepier than Charles, the other balloon song in the game that was also assigned to Team Depression. Rain and Petra was added later for Vivid Bad Squad [Team Streetwear] and the in-game cover was actually not as bad as it could be. Okay, sidebar over). So, feeling a little disappointed before I even hit play, I assumed the album would be mostly Nomad-like songs, and not Mellow-like songs. A leopard can't change its shorts after all.

I was wrong! The first song on the album, Love Sick, is in fact, exactly like Mellow: bright, upbeat, catchy, poppy, brazenly romantic from the title onward. It honestly sounds like it could make for great tiktok audio: I was surprised I didn't find any clips set to it when I searched. There's a strong beat. I still don't like his voice, but I like it better in this than in some of his other songs. I don't feel like he's trying too hard, and he does have a few fun effects on it. Generally, it feels like every song on this album is doing different things, which is always pleasant to hear from an album. I do not like every song on the album (Howdy is far weepier than I can tolerate. When I said I've listened to it all the way through 4 times I do usually skip Howdy), but I do like more than one of them. Most of them are pretty upbeat, at least. And this duet version of Young & Foolish on his channel is really cool! His songs do, in my opinion, generally sound better when other people are singing them!

But I think his singing's growing on me.

Current Music: Love Sick by Keina Suda like I said

Yoh Kamiyama is really interesting to me because he's a former vocaloid producer turned singer (like Kenshi Yonezu who I've talked about previously on here before) but the stuff that stood out about his vocaloid production and that carried over to his recent work are his tuning and his willingness to experiment.

Cutlery is one of my favorites of Kamiyama's Miku songs. His Miku sounds high but not squeaky, not realistic or human but kind of.. like a robot. What's really interesting about Cutlery specifically is he did a self cover of it and you can hear he tweaked the instrumentals a bit to complement his lower voice better, something a lot of cover and self-cover artists don't bother to do.

When he wasn't working with Miku, Kamiyama used vflower. Vflower is a very difficult vocaloid to work with. I personally think she sounds like a ten year old boy being strangled in most producer's hands: shrill, piercing, whiny. Vflower in lili is singing on the lower end of her range, and probably the clearest she goes. I prefer lower pitched vflower, so this works great for me, but might not be to everyone's taste. The instrumentation is sparing and complementary to the melody without overshadowing it, letting her unique voice shine as the focus.

So how did these vocaloid tuning styles carry over to this own singing? Sugar Highway is a very computery song for a person to sing: chiptuney instrumentals, pixelated video, and obvious auto tune used to create a robotic effect. It's far more upbeat than either of the other songs I've mentioned so far, but the emphasis and focus remains the same: interesting sounds, offbeat lyrics and a weird hook to capture the listener's attention.

Not all his original songs have conspicuous autotune or digital instruments: his most recent MV, Kamen, is amazing and I'm obsessed with it, but it's influenced by jazz and big band music and has TRUMPETS. His more recent music has sounded a bit more...normie? I guess? since he did the opening theme for the romance anime Horimiya which brought him some new attention. But it's still catchy, still enjoyable, and still creative: I already mentioned the trumpets, but something that stands out to me about Kamiyama as opposed to the other musicians I've discussed on here before is none of his songs sound the same. Pinocchio-p's songs can be recognized from a 2 second soundbyte, but Kamiyama has like. Two songs that sound like each other at most. Bunny kinda sounds like Sugar Highway, but Laundry doesn't sound like either of those. Aoitoge kinda sounds like Yellow, but Iro Kousui doesn't sound like any of what I just listed. Actually wait maybe Iro Kousui sounds a little Laundry I'm not sure. My best friend hated Yellow and refuses to listen to other songs by him, but most of his songs don't sound like Yellow!

I wrote this post last night and started putting in links this morning and Kamiyama conveniently posted a video for the Hatsune Miku song he created for the video game Project Sekai two hours ago. This Miku sounds raspier than the Miku in his earlier vocaloid works, but the instrumentation and melody reminds me of his more recent music. I like it.

The overall impression from his discography is that Kamiyama is a guy who likes sounds, and playing with sound, while still making music that is pleasant and fun to listen to for casual fans. And I'm into that.

Yoh Kamiyama is a good musician, a good producer, and a creative artist, and I enjoy his work!

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: Mirai by Yoh Kamiyama <3

I've been doing a lot of things, but this is the most immediate/recent thing. I've mentioned Pinocchio-P before in this post, and also mentioned that I'm a big fan. The reason I was listening to his music all day is he just released a new video featuring Rin (the last time he used Rin was eight whole years ago!) and then I clicked into his playlist of music videos and it was just nice to have in the background.
Pinocchio-P's trademark is using his own voice to support and back up the vocaloid voices. In his live shows, as demonstrated in this recording of Whatever Yama Says Goes, he treats it as a sort of duet with Miku's prerecorded vocals, singing live while Miku sings from the computer on account of she is not real. I love how he's just. He is just Some Guy. The archetypal Some Guy. In a red hat. I want to see him live so bad. Anyway, he works with the vocaloid voices to create a feeling of collaboration. Miku is the star, but Pinocchio-P helps make her shine.
I also love how much he loves vocaloid for what it is. He has no less than 3 songs explicitly about how much he loves vocaloid and Miku. (Because You're Here, The Vocaloid Songs Ten Years Later, and Vocaloids Are Lame). A lot of producers move on from making vocaloid music and find success as solo artists singing themselves, but Pinocchio-P chooses to continue making music with vocaloid, because he likes it. He makes non-vocaloid stuff sometimes as well, but he seems to have a lot of respect for the scene as a whole, and I like that.
Pinocchio-P's work is niche, deliberately so. He's said in an interview before "if I was the most popular vocaloid producer, that'd be a sign that something's wrong with the scene." His songs feature upbeat electronic melodies and lyrics about subjects as wide-ranging as onions and Buddhist death gods. But they're catchy and fun and I like them. My favorite is Yozurina.

Next time: possibly Russian rock? Possibly urban fantasy thoughts? We'll see.

Current Music: Nee Nee Nee featuring Kagamine Rin & Hatsune Miku by Pinocchio-P

My mom thinks Vocaloids sound like chipmunks singing.

I don't remember when I first showed her a Vocaloid video, but it must've been pretty early on, between 2010 and 2012, because I needed her to buy me a Teto cosplay for my first anime convention in 2012 (when I was in 8th grade). I don't remember what I showed her either (probably Romeo and Cinderella live? I liked that one a lot back then. Or maybe Matryoshka) but my mom saw it and decided it sounds like Alvin and the fucking Chipmunks. When I went to Miku Expo in 2018, she asked me "how was the Chipmunk concert?" afterwards. It's a Whole Thing.

What's stuck with me about this pronouncement, after listening to hundreds of songs from hundreds of producers, is that Hatsune Miku and her virtual friends can sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks-- if you tune them that way.

( this ended up being over a thousand words so cut for length! )

Current Music: Alien Alien by Nayutalien's stuck in my head again.

Kenshi Yonezu dropped a new music video yesterday and! It! SLAPS!

I've been a fan of his music since I was in middle school, when Yonezu was making Vocaloid songs under the name "Hachi" and I was watching his self-drawn music videos of those songs with English subtitles by vgperson. He was always a star in the Vocaloid scene-- Pinocchio-P even said in this interview "Probably everyone was watching not because it was Vocaloid, but because it was Hachi. I get the impression of that charisma spilling out of the cup of Vocaloid and becoming Kenshi Yonezu."

And he's been so successful! He did the first opening theme to the second season of My Hero Academia (Peace Sign), he held a concert in Fortnite to promote his latest album, he wrote a song for the 2020 Olympics, he launched a fashion line for Uniqlo which sold out instantly and the store on fifth avenue in New York City was decorated in the album artwork he drew for himself. I'm so proud of this guy!

His music isn't just good, it's uniquely his, ugly emotions and difficult topics conveyed with poetic lyrics and skillful instrumentation. As Kenshi Yonezu, he pushes his own voice to an emotionality his vocaloid songs had never reached, creating songs that sound raw and intimate.

However, he's also notoriously shy. Yonezu doesn't really like performing live and doesn't do it often. What's so stunning about this new video for "Shinigami" is how he pushes himself to perform in it, as himself, acting with his face and whole body, allowing the camera angles to catch glimpses of his eyes. It's compelling. It's magnetic. It's that charisma Pinocchio-P mentioned as being a part of who Kenshi Yonezu is.

"Shinigami" takes inspiration from a traditional rakugo story, and reminds me of older songs Yonezu made as Hachi like "Musunde Hiraite Rasetsu to Mukuro" (which, sidenote, I can't believe he drew the video for that all by himself! with a mouse! He HAS the range!). His body of work shows he's always been fascinated with mythology and storytelling, and when he says "with Shinigami I did only what I liked," I believe it.

If you've never heard of this guy before reading this post, his latest single release (including Shinigami) is on Spotify, and so is his last full album Stray Sheep (which I love a lot). Some of his best new songs (in my opinion) are Kanden, Flamingo, Horse and Deer, and also Shunrai from his previous album. As classic as his vocaloid music is, it's also older and less polished. But Matryoshka was my favorite song in 8th grade, so.

I like him! There you go.

Current Music: Shinigami by Kenshi Yonezu

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mozaikmage

April 2026

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Page Summary

Got It In Excess: The Playlist, annotated
So dazzling, so dazzling
Yoh Kamiyama is really cool and I like him!
I've been listening to Pinocchio-P all day
"Are you listening to the Japanese Chipmunks Again?": Some thoughts on Vocaloid Tuning
Unmitigated Fangirl Glee: Kenshi Yonezu my beloved

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Got It In Excess: The Playlist, annotated

So dazzling, so dazzling

Yoh Kamiyama is really cool and I like him!

I've been listening to Pinocchio-P all day

"Are you listening to the Japanese Chipmunks Again?": Some thoughts on Vocaloid Tuning

Unmitigated Fangirl Glee: Kenshi Yonezu my beloved